Tesla and SpaceX are ramping up semiconductor hiring as Elon Musk’s ambitious plans for a Terafab take shape.
Tesla is hiring Terafab engineers in Palo Alto and Austin, according to job listings on the company’s website, after Musk said the company would collaborate with SpaceX to build what could be the largest chip manufacturing plant in history.
In California, the EV giant is looking for module process engineers with expertise in lithography, the highly technical discipline that uses ultraviolet light to etch chip designs onto silicon wafers at a molecular scale. It is offering a base salary of $88,000 to $240,000, depending on experience and other factors.
Applicants need to have at least 10 years of experience in cutting-edge semiconductor development.
The job listing suggests they would also need to be comfortable with Tesla’s famously intense work culture, with expectations including a willingness to be on-call to “support 24/7 manufacturing operations” and respond rapidly to “critical production issues.”
At the Terafab announcement on Saturday, Musk said the facility would create lithography masks — the quartz or glass template that contains the chip design imprinted onto the wafer — in-house, allowing Tesla and SpaceX to quickly iterate and improve chip designs.
“To the best of my knowledge, this doesn’t exist anywhere in the world,” said Musk, who added that the companies were exploring “some very interesting new physics” to make the project work.
Tesla’s Terafab division is also hiring process integration engineers to build advanced logic chips, with base salaries ranging from $88,000 to $338,280. Musk has said Terafab will combine logic and memory chip production under a single roof, something that is highly unusual in the chipmaking industry.
The wide salary range is in line with Tesla’s approach to compensation. Business Insider previously reported that the company offers lower base salaries than its tech giant rivals, but includes substantial stock grants.
Tesla is also advertising open roles for silicon engineers in Austin, and is looking to recruit a technical program manager with a proven track record of running “$100 million-plus capex projects” to oversee the design and construction of the fabs. Neither job listing includes base salaries.
Tesla faces talent scramble over Terafab
Recruitment will be one of the biggest challenges facing Musk’s ambitious goal of building one of the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturers from scratch. The industry relies on specialized knowledge that is carefully cultivated within leading companies like TSMC. It’s also facing a global shortage of skilled workers.
SpaceX is scaling up its semiconductor hiring as the rocket maker prepares to launch up to one million orbital data centers, powered by AI chips built by Terafab that are specially adapted for the icy wastes of space.
The company has around 60 open positions in its Silicon division, according to SpaceX’s website, though it’s unclear which of these roles — if any — are directly related to Terafab.
They include assembly and packaging engineers at its Starlink factory in Bastrop, Texas, where the company invested $280 million last year to expand its semiconductor R&D and packaging facilities, as well as engineers in Washington and California to develop “cutting-edge” specialist chips for deployment in space and on Earth.
“In true SpaceX fashion, Starlink is taking the next step in vertical integration by bringing integrated circuit packaging and assembly in-house for development and manufacturing,” read the descriptions on the Bastrop job listings, which do not include salaries.
SpaceX and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
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